Ruby's Button Tin

Thrifty Saturday

Yesterday bought some good finds in charity (thrift) shops and another (slightly shamefaced) addition or two (or three) to my ridiculously large fabric stash.  My best buy was this 22 piece coffee set.  The sugar bowl has a slight chip as does one of the cups, but apart from that it's in very good condition.  I obviously don't need a 22 piece coffe set, but I loved the colours and funky pattern.  Anyway, at £7.50 it was an absolute bargain so I snapped it up.  Over at the fabric store I found two small floral prints which are dead ringers for Libery prints.  Really pretty and ideal for patchwork.  Plus an over the top, rather goofy colourful cotton which just looked so zingy I had to have a metre.  Two more mini splurges followed as I bought a £1.50 china beaker with a Silver Jubilee design.  The Silver Jubilee being that of Queen Mary and King George.  It doesn't look valuable, but it's a nice little thing.  I tried photographing it, but my camera's not good enough to take a decent non-blurry picture in close up. 

Finally, my purse nearly empty, I spent 99p on 16 fake chickens .... no, I don't know why either but I saw these Easter chicks and thought 'There must be a use for those!'   They look so silly I had to have 'em ...

It's getting nearer the weekend

I keep meaning to blog more often, but this week's been so busy at work I just flake out in the evening and don't get much done at all.  I've been slowly doing the odd bits of needlepoint, like this mainly blue tablemat, and piecing together hexagons for patchwork.  I'm amazed that some people blog every day.  How do they find the time!!?!!  Though I suppose they're just organized and don't fritter away valuable minutes doing Sudoku puzzles and looking at goofy cats on icanhazcheezburger. 

Last weekend was so lovely and sunny I spent Sunday morning up on the allotment.  I'm preparing a patch of ground to grow sweetcorn in.  How well it will do I've no idea.  So far I'm planning sweetcorn, courgettes, beans, some spuds and on the flower front - larkspur, lupins, marigolds and nasturtians.  (I don't think I've spelt that last one properly, but the dictionary's gone awol ...)  This is the view from my allotment patch:

 

On a good day it's a wonderful spot.  You hear lots of birdsong, and it's such a relaxing place to while away an hour or two. 

The only other things I've been doing (apart from scoffing way too many chocolate HobNobs) are reading 'The End of Mr Y' by Scarlet Thomas (weird, good, not sure where the story's going ...), posting more photos on Flickr (I heart Flickr!) and watching Sunset Boulevard again on my ancient video recorder.  Gloria Swanson - fabulous!!  What a gal. 

Just one more image to post, then I'm done for now ...

Another piece of fishy needlepoint in every colour of the rainbow.

March daffodils

I've a lovely vase of jaunty yellow daffodils in my sitting room at the moment.  They were flowering on my allotment when I made it up there over the weekend.  Not that I can take the credit for growing them. The bulbs were planted when I took the patch over, but the flowers came as a nice surprise.  I've got various seedlings in trays nestling in window sills in my flat, and once they're hardly enough to survive the Evil Slugs I'll pop them in. 

I can't claim to be getting much in the way of crafty stuff done right now.  Work is really busy, so once I get home I just want to veg out in front of the telly and scoff Cadburys mini eggs.  I'm slowly reading 'The End of Mr Y' by Scarlett Thomas which is odd but in a good way.  I'm also looking into family history, going to the online census records and getting thoroughly frustrated by the slow progress I'm making.  Part of the problem is my family name is Thompson, so it's not exactly distinctive.  I've yet to find any disreputable black sheep or gloriously romantic heroines or heroes among my great-greats, just lots of solid working class stock.  Oh well ... can't all be descended from the blue blooded gentry, can we?